Death and Love

Good morning! Although Amena cut it really close, she did not miss the bus. Cedric got up sometime before 6:00 and Seth was up before 6:30. They are both ready to go. Cedric even just came inside to tell Seth to hurry even though the bus won’t be here for another 20 minutes. Silly child.

Seth is drawing. On the paper he has a list. It looks like this:

Daniel

baby goat

baby goat

Trista

Deby [Debby]

sone [soon]

Princes[s]

I think it is good for children to have chores. I really do like to feed the goats; it keeps me in touch with them, so to speak. However, with not feeling so hot this week, I’ve been having the boys feed and water the goats. This morning Seth came in with an observation for me about Princess. I think she must have arthritis or some joint problem because her front knees are swollen. I told them that it was likely after she kids that we’ll have to put her down. “What does put her down mean?” Cedric asked. I drew a line across my throat with my finger.

“Oh,” Seth said, “you mean kill her.” I nodded.

That led to a discussion of death and birth.

Seth said, “That means we have five.”

“Five?” I asked.

“Buried.” He ticked off names: “Trista, Debby, the baby goat, the other goat, Daniel. . . And soon it will be six.”

I want my children to have a healthy attitude about death. It is very much a part of life; not a subject to ignore or gloss over. Part of the discussion about death with Seth included a quarter. I explained that birth and death are like opposite sides of that coin. Life as we know would not exist without both sides and each is like a door from one plane of existence to another. The only part of the door analogy I don’t like is that most doors allow you to go through from either side and more than once. Although we do hear of near-death experiences, typically we do not get to go through that door multiple times.

Joanna and Zak picked up antibiotics for me and Joseph yesterday and we each had our first doses last night. Joseph feels better. I feel much better. My throat doesn’t hurt as bed and my neck isn’t as sore. Still have swollen glands but they aren’t quite as bad. I didn’t sleep very well last night but that is because it didn’t seem to matter what position I was in, it wasn’t good. If I was on my back, snot and gunk would go down my throat which caused breathing difficulty. If I was on my side, the pillow put too much pressure on my swollen throat which caused breathing difficulty. Just a no-win situation there. If I have to, I guess I’ll take a nap today.

This morning when I came downstairs, Joanna had made bags of Easter candy for each of us. She wrote notes and stuck them in the bags. When I went over to the kitchen, I noticed that the counter was clean. The dishes had been put away and the dish rack washed. Wow. Joanna was busy last night. She can be such a thoughtful child. It’s hard not to love them and forgive any wrongdoing when they do things like that.

Speaking of wrongdoings, I recently was part of a discussion in which was about the axiom ‘love the sinner but not the sin.’ It seemed to be the general consensus that it is hard to do this. I’ve been attempting to figure out why and I have not come up with an answer. It might be because I don’t have a problem with it. In general, I am not a people person and I would live my life as an introverted hermit if I could. However, this is not possible. I do do better with small groups of people as opposed to large groups. In large groups I just clam up and if I can’t find one or two people I am comfortable with, I will keep to myself, usually at the margin. In small groups, I’m better. In spite of the fact that I don’t like large groups of people and in spite of the fact that my opinions lead me to criticize some groups and even some individuals, I still understand that we are products of many things including our families, our education, our environment. We are influenced by people, situations, books, media, etc. It is not my job to judge (even though I know I sometimes do), and even if/when I say something that seems very judgmental, if I look at what I appear to be judging, it is often the actions, not the person.

I hope that didn’t come across wrong. I am very opinionated. I know what I believe. I don’t like people as a whole. I don’t think anyone on this earth is perfect (although there might be one or two close). We all have opinions. We all have different beliefs and feelings. Not everyone is going to like everyone else. We all have sins and imperfections (and boy, I must be at the top of the list). But that does not mean that I cannot love individuals.

Have a spectacular day!